The House Is Alive
by Karma Rue Lovegood Everdeen
Summary: Living in any of Toni's houses was always going to be interesting with all the AI's hanging around. The problem is that many of the residents don't actually know that they're there and trouble was always going to ensue. Prequel to There's Always A Catch. Request by Amara Calla for 500th review oneshot


The House Is Alive

**A/n: This was requested by Amara Calla for getting me to 500 reviews so I hope that everyone likes it. Meeting JARVIS and the millions of bots Toni owns.**

Living with Toni took a lot of getting used to. She had several strange habits and it wasn't uncommon to find bits of exposed circuitry lying around that she had been working on whilst walking. There was also the fact that the entire tower was a bit of a labyrinth because of just how many floors it had and how many of the rooms looked similar.

But the part that took the most getting used was the fact that practically everything in the house seemed to literally have a mind of its own. Because Toni had made basically everything in her house into an AI and was completely unapologetic for how shocked the new residents of Stark Tower were to find out about this.

~#Natasha, Peggy & Nova#~

Of course Natasha's first encounter with an AI hadn't been at Stark Tower so by the time she moved in there she was more prepared for Toni's antics than the rest. But that didn't mean she hadn't gotten a shock when she had been unprepared the first time she had worked for Toni in the Malibu Mansion. She had been briefed about JARVIS, Dummy, You & Butterfingers when she took the case as the entire world knew they existed and SHIELD had done a little digging into what they could do.

The problem came when as part of her job as Toni's PA she had to fetch her friend coffee whilst she was working on something that she said was important. Natasha could make neither head nor tails of it but that had become normal even if because of her profession it was something that she didn't like at all. Mind you she had gotten the information she came for. Toni was perfect for the Avengers Initiative despite Fury's fears because her primary project was protecting everyone that she could. The only problem with that plan was that Toni was dying. Sure Toni hadn't told Natasha that – she hadn't told anyone in fact – but Natasha had easily been able to figure it out. All of her questions and actions lately screamed that she was setting her affairs in order and preparing to say goodbye. She hadn't figured out the exact cause of it yet but she guessed it had something to do with the arc reactor that was in her chest.

She got so caught up in her thoughts that she didn't register that she was grabbing the coffee that Toni had explicitly told her was for guests only for while it was perfectly nice to most people Toni found it disgusting next to her regular brews. She was about to spoon it into the coffee maker when it piped up a series of beeps and words scrolled across a screen near the rim telling her to, 'put the coffee down. It's wrong!' So she did put the coffee down; rather dramatically as despite her spy training she jumped about three foot in the air and dropped the container full of coffee on the kitchen floor. The vacuum cleaner suddenly zoomed out of its position by the door to clean it up which didn't help Natasha calm down any. Both the coffee machine and vacuum cleaner kept beeping at her and she didn't understand what they wanted so she was very relieved when Toni came running out of the elevator asking, "Nova and Peggy told me something was wrong. What happened?"

"I think I nearly put the wrong coffee in the coffee maker but I didn't exactly expect it to come to life and… shout at me," Natasha said pausing a little at the end as she wasn't sure how to describe the coffee maker's reaction.

"It's okay," Toni said clearly relieved when she heard that was all that had happened, "Peggy gets a bit defensive if she's made to brew the rubbish stuff more often than normal and JARVIS must have told her that the coffee was for me. Nova was just cleaning up after you I see."

"You turned your coffee maker and your vacuum cleaner into AI's," Natasha said incredulously.

"When I get drunk and see something that's not working as well as it could it tends to become an AI," Toni told her, "I only work on them when drunk nowadays because their faults give them personality."

Deciding that she didn't really want to continue this conversation Natasha dismissed her friend with a quick, "you should get back to whatever you were doing. I'll make you the right coffee which I'm sure… Peggy will appreciate."

~#Phil & Viva#~

Phil Coulson prided himself on being well informed and very difficult to surprise. He would say that the amount of times he had been surprised by something were perfectly easy to count on a single hand. Of course one of them had already been due to Toni so he should have expected her to pull it off again.

He was sitting in one of her many living rooms as she worked down in the basement to save her own life. Phil still felt a little guilty about what they had done to her because he knew how she hated being locked up after Afghanistan. But while he originally had been vehemently opposed to Fury's plan he had accepted it when he heard that Toni wasn't even trying to save herself. Not only was she an important part of protecting the planet but she was also his friend and he didn't want to lose her like he had lost so many others to his profession. He switched on the TV and it was showing some sort of documentary on Stark Industries so he decided to change the channel using Toni's extensively edited remote. But the TV didn't seem to be having any of that. It kept switching back to the documentary after showing a brief flash of the programmes he wanted to watch.

He was trying this for about two minutes before a face flashed across the screen looking angry and it told him, "Stop interrupting my show."

Phil was rather ashamed to admit that he fell off the sofa due to the shock which was probably the most undignified he had looked since he was a teenager. He was very thankful that Toni was stuck in the basement and couldn't see it. Suddenly the phone nearest to him rang and when Toni didn't pick it up in the basement he decided to answer it for himself and it turned out Toni was on the other end of the line. "I'm sorry about Viva," she told him, "she gets a bit territorial when she wants to watch something and you try and change the channel. For some reason she watches anything she can about me and the company which is a little strange."

"You turned your television into an AI," Phil said knowing that was extreme even for Toni, "were you drunk?"

"Yes," Toni said honestly, "but she's perfectly nice. If you want to get the TV you want though, judging on the channels you were trying to access you should go and talk to Milan who's in the 8th spare bedroom. She loves reality TV." He could also have gone to Jazz who was much closer but she was about to attempt to sneak out so she wasn't going to tell him that.

"Thank you," Phil said standing and asking JARVIS for directions to the bedroom Toni had indicated trying not to think about his encounter with the temperamental TV.

~#Bruce & Aqua#~

From his very first look at the labs Bruce knew that he shouldn't be surprised by anything he found in there. So when Toni had introduced him to the AI's that ran everything she didn't have time to do herself and didn't delegate to people like Piper he took it in his stride. And his first few encounters with AI's outside of the lab went well too as they were all things that he expected Toni would have tinkered with.

He came a cropper when he was faced with one of the showers in the suite Toni had built him decided that it didn't like him very much. He had been a bit cross after he had heard Toni fighting with the US military again about how he wasn't a monster (something he was now starting to believe) and accidentally denting the pipe a little bit. And the next thing he knew every time he went in there the shower seemed to know exactly what he wanted and gave him the opposite. When he wanted something cold the water would constantly be scolding and we he wanted a nice long hot shower to relax he would be hit with a freezing blast and then the thing would shut off completely.

At first Bruce didn't know what to think about this because he didn't think the slight damage he had done to the pipe would have been enough to cause that. Besides he had immediately told Toni who had fixed it straight away. He didn't tell Toni about it purely because every time he tried she was busy or they ended up chatting about another project they wanted to work on. This was a problem because the problem only seemed to be getting worse as the shower regularly scolded him. He started reaching in and hitting the button and quickly withdrawing his arm in the hopes that maybe it would run out of steam after a while but it never seemed to. In the end he knew that it was either wash in the sink or finally get Toni to look at the issue.

Of course the minute he told her what was happening she knew exactly what had gone wrong, "Aqua must be mad at you because you accidentally injured her. I'm sorry that I didn't think she would have earlier but she's not usually a temperamental AI. You can borrow Lilah in my suite for now while I have a word with Aqua about the accident."

"You put AI's in your showers as well," Bruce said amazed, "but the sheer amount of waterproofing you must have had to do with every individual wire is incredible. It must have taken hours even for you because you wouldn't let the bots handle such delicate work."

"Well," Toni said with a shrug, "I just felt like they should be treated the same as I treat every appliance I own. As one of the family and it would be weird even for me if I didn't make them AI's before doing that."

Bruce cracked a smile at that and Toni led him to the lift stating her passcode so he could gain access to her suite. He had a relaxing shower for the first time in weeks as the shower beeped pleasantly at him and by the time he went back to his suites Toni had finished her conversation with Aqua and translated the beeps she gave him when he came back in as an apology for messing with him for so long.

Although it was very odd for him he told Aqua that it didn't matter because he was in the wrong too and he never had any troubles having a shower in his own suite ever again.

~#Clint & JARVIS#~

Clint was an acrobat and a spy at heart after spending as much time as he did in the circus and with SHIELD. This meant that pretty soon after Toni had left him alone in his new suite to get acquainted with it he jumped into the nearest vent and began to crawl around the ducts trying to see what he could find in Toni's extensive house. What he didn't realise was that Toni a) had an AI that saw everything including the inside of the vents and b) also had thoroughly booby trapped all of the vents just in case someone managed to get into them.

He triggered one of these and weapons immediately sprung to attention in the walls and Clint leapt back suddenly right into a net that had appeared behind him. "I apologise for the inconvenience Agent Barton," a disembodied voice told him making him struggle a little momentarily in shock, "but maybe you should ask Miss Stark before you explore an area that she hasn't introduced to you herself."

"What the…? Where the hell is that coming from?" Clint asked confused recognising the slight reprimand in the voice's tone and not being very pleased to be treated like a child by someone who wouldn't even show their face.

"My name is JARVIS and I am the AI in charge of the Stark Household and the Iron Man suit," JARVIS informed him, "and I would appreciate it if you didn't enter any vents that Miss Stark hasn't explicitly told you that you have permission for in future because replacing all those traps will inconvenience me for five minutes. And I do not want to work overtime stopping you from being seriously injured by the traps when I have to deal with real threats."

Momentarily struck practically speechless by the reprimand Clint just muttered a quick, "okay," and then shut up. He figured it was for his own good as every evil AI in every movie he had ever watched was flashing through his mind and it was a little terrifying even for someone as trained as he was.

"Just as a reminder," JARVIS said coldly and then unleashed a flurry of fire extinguisher foam which clung to Clint's uniform which was generally not a pleasant experience, "have a good day Agent Barton."

Ten minutes later Clint tumbled out of a vent at Natasha's feet and all she had to say was, "you should know better Barton."

~#Steve & Dummy#~

Steve had never been into Toni's labs before because he hadn't been given a reason to but now Toni had called him into one of the research labs telling him that she had designed a new shield for him that should return to him much more consistently. He was looking forward to it in one way but he wasn't too keen on entering a place that was even more technologically advanced than the rest of the house. If he was overwhelmed by that at times then he was certain he would be the biggest fish out of water in the history of the universe when he entered the lab.

It was almost as bad as he thought it would be although a lot of the things that were immediately visible were things that Toni had explained to him sufficiently enough that he had at least a basic grasp of what they did. "Oh Steve there you are," Toni called as he entered, "I was wondering when you would get here. Dummy has the shield. Dummy would you bring it over for me please."

A little robotic arm that Steve hadn't noticed trundled over beeping happily carrying a shield that looked identical to Steve's old one except for the fact that it had a strip of metal across the back that his old one didn't. As Dummy was trying to hand it over to Toni he nearly dropped it and Steve had to lunge down and catch it before it hit the floor. He could have sworn that the robot's beeps following this sounded almost sad.

"It's okay Dummy," Toni told the robotic arm to Steve's bemusement, "no harm done and I've always known that your claw is not quite secure enough to lift something that big and carry it a long distance."

"Is this one of the EI things that you were talking about?" Steve said remembering a conversation he had with Toni a while back about JARVIS and what he did.

"It's AI Steve," Toni said with a smile, "and don't call them things again unless you want them to get upset with you. But yes! They have their own personalities and skills which basically make them people."

Steve decided just to accept this as one of the many strange things about Toni's home and move on with the conversation, "so how is this advanced retrieval gig going to work Toni?"

"Well," Toni said before launching into her explanation of how she had designed a wristband to call back the shield using the strip of metal she had installed onto the new design.

~#Thor & Addy#~

Thor was perhaps the person who had the most traumatic first encounter with an AI. Both for himself and for the AI which was hardly surprising considering the fact that unlike the others he had no knowledge whatsoever of any kind of Earth technology and even though Steve's was also limited Steve had a more gentle mind-set and just decided to tread carefully around any appliances.

The problem started in the kitchen (as they often did with Thor) as Thor looked out a packet of pop tarts to eat having discovered that they were what he considered the best food on Midgard. After he had eaten them raw the first time Toni had told him that he was actually supposed to toast them and pointed out the toaster. She had been planning on explaining it to him more thoroughly but then Clint (who still hadn't learned) had emerged from an air vent covered in foam again and she had to go attempt to talk some sense into him.

So Thor has no idea how the toaster actually worked so he just shoved the entire packet of pop tarts in every which way ignoring the indignant squeaks that came from the toaster. He thought they couldn't possibly be coming from the device and so passed it off as being something else.

It wasn't until shortly after he started the toaster that he realised something was wrong as it began to squeal in pain and scorch marks began to appear. Thankfully Toni ran in at just that moment having been told Addy was in distress by JARVIS. She picked her up and clawed the pop tarts out before rounding on Thor in a fit of pure anger.

The tirade lasted for about half an hour and by the end of it Toni was crying and trying to comfort Addy whilst still shouting at Thor, Thor was looking thoroughly abashed and upset that he'd injured one of Toni's friends and the other Avengers were watching on terrified of Toni's temper. Bruce was infinitely grateful that the damage to Aqua had merely been superficial or he might have ended up on the receiving end of this.

Once she was done Toni stormed out taking a thoroughly traumatised Addy with her and Thor got the genius idea to get Natasha take him out to get flowers for Toni to apologise. Natasha wasn't sure this was the best idea but didn't want to stand in between a demigod and something he wanted to do.

Addy came out of the incident with a few new parts and an extreme fear of Thor whom she refused to let touch her to make pop tarts ever again. He had to get someone to make them for him or he went without. Thor was quite satisfied with the end result other than that for at least Lady Toni had seemed happy with his gift of a floral arrangement for her room. At least she had laughed for quite a long time which he assumed was good.

**A/n: Okay, so that's it! It was a lot of fun writing this so I hope you all and Amara Calla especially like it.**


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